The Hunt for SWAG!

This Blog documents our family's geocaching adventures, and day trips. We started geocaching in July of 2009 and were quickly hooked! The title of this Blog says it all, as we are always on the hunt for fun SWAG ("Trade items" or "Treasures" which are placed in geocache containers for trading). We are a family that LOVES to travel, and does a lot of day trips. Geocaches are EVERYWHERE, and wherever we are, we are looking for treasure!

Tuesday, July 19, 2011

We spent a day driving around Clear Lake to do some sightseeing and find some caches along the way. On this trip we did not do much research and just stopped randomly from time to time at caches. When we don't read up on area caches we never know what we are going to find. Most searches have us looking through the bushes and opening a tupperware, or similar container, but sometimes at the end of the hunt we find something that was left with more thought and planning. We stopped to look for an ammo box which is usually a pretty easy find. As we arrived at GZ we spent a few minutes looking around and then spotted a rope that was tied to a log on the ground? Following the rope up, it was attached to an ammo box and hanging over a branch high in the air!

Above is a good picture of the girls at GZ and you can see the rope off to the left. We had not seen a cache hoisted in the air like that before, so the girls thought it was a cool one and of course an ammo can will be full of SWAG!

Above is the cache hiding high in the tree. As we lowered this one down we could not help but smile. The extra effort to hide the cache up high like that made it unique and cool. I gave this one a favorite point on geocaching.com for the extra effort. I did not include the name of this cache, since we were showing the hide. If you'd like to know it I'd be happy to send it to you if you leave a comment.

Thursday, June 23, 2011

I'd read about this cache that requires you to either rent some kind of boat or swim/wade across water to get to it. The cache was called Isle Cache Here and the plan was to rent a canoe for the 4 of us and row to the island to find the cache. All the rental information can be found on the Sacramento State Aquatic Center website. (You can save the park entrance fee by parking in the Aquatic center's parking lot as long as you rent some equipment that day.) When we arrived we found out that only 3 people are allowed on the canoe's at a time, so we had to rent two tandem kayaks. This made for a much harder paddle across the lake, but the kids LOVED it! In a canoe we would not of gotten wet, but in a kayak we did, so plan accordingly. It was about .6 miles to the cache from the dock, and with no wind and a nice sunny afternoon we headed for the cache!

The kids loved the paddle to the island, and this was our first find that required something other than a hike to get to GZ. Once on the island we found the cache quickly. The girls were excited to get back in the kayaks and enjoyed the ride back.

The above picture is of Maya and I on our way back to the dock. Lake Natoma is a nice place to spend the day and I was glad we went after this Terrain 5 cache. So many geocachers are trying to grab as many finds in a day as they can, but a cache like this well worth the extra time and effort to get to. Go for it!

Glossary of Geocaching terms

If any terminology or geocaching lingo is ever written on this blog that is not defined here, please ask me to add it!

1. Geocaching - A high-tech treasure hunting game played throughout the world by adventure seekers equipped with GPS devices. The basic idea is to locate hidden containers, called geocaches, outdoors and then share your experiences online.

2. FTF - First to find a cache.

3. DNF - Did not find a cache.

4. Muggle - Name for a non-geocacher in the area of your hunt.

5. SWAG - Term for the items to trade inside the cache container. This can be anything really. Kids refer to this stuff as 'Treasure'

6. Signature Item - A SWAG item that is a geocachers 'special item'. This could be a custom made coin, wooden nickel, card, bottle cap, or anything like that.

8. Nano - Smaller than a micro and typically has a magnet on the end and placed on metal. TINY log inside is all.

9. Trackable item - There are items found in caches that have a tracking number on them, and their movement from container to container is logged at geocaching.com. These items are usually Tracking Bugs (TB) or GeoCoins.